This Week in Legacy: Miraculous Changes

Welcome to This Week in Legacy! This week we have a brief dip into new technology across Magic Online and a few Paper tournaments, some new cards revealed from Ixalan, as well as look at the recent Challenge as always.

More Ixalan Spoilers

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This may be the herald of something pretty exciting — Dino-Stompy! I can imagine a shell using the Alpha, any cheaper Dinosaurs we receive (in Green-Red), Chalice of the Void, maybe even Punishing Fire and Grove of the Burnwillows... Seems like the Dinosaurs are getting quite a push, so I wouldn't be surprised to see something reasonably playable in a Stompy or a Nic Fit shell.

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This is... Not the Goblin Goblin players were hoping for. 1/1s they have plenty of already to get bricked by Deathrite Shaman. But at least Goblins are back, and hence there may be some playable ones moving into the future!

This is a pretty interesting creature. Although it's ability is somewhat steep in terms of price (we've been spoiled by Judge's Faimilar and Mausoleum Wanderer who sacrifice for free), it is quite powerful, especially in the Abrupt Decay-less world we're living in at the moment. What to protect is the question... Perhaps a so-called "Noble Fish" shell utilising this to defend Edric, Spymaster of Trest and draw tons of cards could be a fun project.

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Huatli continues in a long line of midrangey grind-engine planeswalkers, spawning out tokens and fighting and killing in a way reminscent of Garruk Relentless. The difference is that she is in White-Red, a somewhat uncommon colour combination, and is also a whole mana more. With four-mana contenders Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, Nahiri, the Harbinger and Chandra, Torch of Defiance in the same colours, I doubt Huatli is getting much play anytime soon, but her -X ability is certainly powerful and something to watch out for. I could see perhaps her occupying a slot in 4c/Naya Loam variants due to them being unable to accomodate the stricter mana requirements of Chandra or Gideon too, but that may be a bit of a stretch.

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Is it time for the Merfolk renaissance... In Green? The Speaker is a vanilla two-mana 1/1 which may not make the cut in a format populated by combo decks, and also has to skew the true-Blue mana of the Merfolk deck to include Tropical Island. However... The deck has been sorely lacking in one-drops for quite some time. Some curve filler could be just what the doctor ordered.

There's also a few neat reprints coming up! Spell Pierce, Duress and Opt (big for Modern, I'm sure!) are all coming from Ixalan with new art:

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Soothsaying Miracles

One big deck I'd like to profile is the next evolution that Miracles lists have taken. When Top was banned, many tried the lacklustre replacement Soothsaying in order to continue the top deck manipulation.

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Many ended up unimpressed, and quickly eschewed the Counterbalance / Soothsaying lock for a Blue-White control deck based on the backbone of Predict and twelve cantrips. We've seen this shell evolve into a more agressive one, featuring more Monastery Mentor, and we've also seen the deck begin to reincorporate some number of Counterbalance. With Abrupt Decay at an all-time low, Counterbalance, even without Top, can still be incredibly powerful. SteFaNoGs has brought us back full circle to Soothsaying but not utilizing it as a four-of. Rather, it and Counterbalance are used as an end game lock-out:

Only two Soothsaying show a lack of emphasise on the card in the early stages of game, which is understandable, but all the digging the deck has meant that this Miracles list can assemble a very different 'win condition' supplementing Jace and Mentor. Mentor also notably gets much better when Counterbalance is still in the picture, as he can be very effectively defended.

I'm not certain this is better than the more Predict-focussed lists, but I do think the deck building decisions are very reasonable and a reflection of where the metagame stands today. A lot of harder matchups for Miracles become a lot easier, I'm sure, when Counterbalance is still a tool available, such as Storm and Burn.

Absolutely Enchanting

Enchantress has randomly been getting some traction this past week too. A more typical list came third at Ongkeko's Hobby Shop in the hands of Nina Nativadad:

This list is relatively straightforward for the Junk color combination; the only new bit of technology being the Solemnitys hanging around and the surprising lack of Sterling Grove. This is obviously great with cumulative upkeep cards like Elephant Grass, as well as hosing Infect. I'm surprised there's no miser Dark Depths in the list to get the opponent with. And honestly, maybe a Living Wish package over Zenith could make this a fun little combo to win with.

Meanwhile, this unconventional list adds Blue into the mix. This provides a lot of powerful Enchantments. Back to Basics is a monstrous hoser, and Words of Wind allows the opponent's entire board to be bounced back to their hand when "going off" with some Enchantress effects and a Serra's Sanctum. Candelabra of Tawnos is also uncommon in Enchantress, but makes sense in a list with Wild Growth and Serra's Sanctum effects to tap for plentiful amounts of mana. Again, this list features no Sterling Grove or Enlightened Tutor to find pieces, instead relying on the raw ability of Enchantress effects to churn through the deck.

09/04/17 Legacy Challenge

Another week, another Legacy Challenge:

Deck

Player

Placing

Eldrazi Stompy

nmks

1

Grixis Delver

Griselpuff

2

Grixis Delver

lampalot

3

4c Control

jacetmsst

4

Esper Delver

Andreas_Muller

5

Lands

Call1Me1Dragon

6

4c Control

mortr3d

7

4c Control

ballestin93

8

A surprise win for stock Eldrazi, which hasn't been seen in awhile, another Top 8 for Maxtortion's Esper Delver and 4c "Czech Pile" Control still truly dominating the Magic Online metagame.

Bob "Griselpuff" Huang's Grixis Delver list I'm a big fan of, eschewing the Stifle or Therapy in the main deck for a very potent creature suite and an additional Spell Pierce. He can then sideboard in some Therapies when required. Both Therapy and Stifle have innate tensions with the Grixis Delver gameplan, particularly Young Pyromancer. Stifle encourages a tempoey "play a big guy and disrupt" plan, which doesn't synergise effectively with Pyromancer, who promotes tapping out and playing proactively to get tokens. Cabal Therapy, on the other hand, is by nature a tempo negative card (despite the supreme blowouts it can produce) as the Delver player needs to spend mana to answer opposing cards while the opponent need not. Adding extra Spell Pierce seems like a happy compromise between the two.

Cartesian has again pushed forward the Aluren archetype, utilsing the Ancestral Visions technology I mentioned a few weeks back. The main deck hence looks very slick and grindy, and I wouldn't be surprised if this is the direction Aluren payers continue to take the deck with 4c Control so prominent. Despit the slick main deck, his usual spicy inclusions of cards like Tablet of the Guilds and Vengeful Rebel make an appearance.

What I'm Playing This Week

The RUGlyf never dies. But I am pretty excited by Kai Sawatari's recent Blue-Red Delver:

RUG-ish in feel but with a solid mana base and a lot more burn than usual. Like Bob's list, Stifle has been eschewed. Grim Lavamancer also takes center stage to slay so many fair decks.

The Spice Corner

The Spice Corner this week comes from SaffronOlive right here who profiled Mono-Blue Painter!

I'm enchanted by this deck. I remember Melbourne local Graham King bringing a similar shell, once Whir of Invention was spoiled, to our weekly and being somewhat unimpressed by it... This has eschewed Hydroblasts in the main deck for just a simple suite of Counterspell and Spell Pierce and has also the back-breaking Back to Basics to cripple opponent's in a similar way that Imperial Painter uses Blood Moon.

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